Exceedingly Mundane

I received a notice, either via regular mail or an email, a few weeks ago from the Intuit, the makers of Quicken. Politely informing me that the version I was currently using (Quicken 2001) was no longer going to be supported. That didn’t bother me that much. However, they also quickly pointed out that the financial institutions that allow transaction downloading via Quicken would no longer be using a version compatible with the 2001 product. Ack. I don’t like being stuck between a rock and a hard place, so I thought it best to go ahead and upgrade. Normally, that is not a very big deal. You install the upgrade, it reads the older versions data files, and you go merrily along your binary way.

WELL – not in my case. Quicken 2005 read my data files all right and most of them were fine. One of my accounts, however, was suddenly unable to connect to my financial institution’s website and download transactions. Something I had been doing on a daily basis for 2 or 3 years now. Stopped working, no error, just blinked and no data was downloaded. I worked on the problem for two days, night and day, reading online documentation, searching Intuit’s knowledge base, etc. I considered calling them, but their website courteously informed me that telephone support costs 24.95 per call. The idea! No way am I going to pay for phone support. I searched high and low on their website to email tech support. Nothing. I emailed my financial institution and never heard back. Ack. I finally tried a live chat with a tech support person. Took two tries to catch a time slot when they were working (they only work 12-8 PM Pacific time). I finally grabbed a tech today, and over the course of 2 1/2 hours, he was able to solve my problem (the downloaded transaction problem and also the problem with the home inventory database, not as critical, but still an issue). I was very happy at the end of the ordeal, albeit, frustrated at the amount of time it took to resolve my issues. He was very patient, however, and kept plugging away at it. And I was very grateful to have it fixed. And to not have to pay 24.95 for support. Especially since I considered this an upgrade issue, since the darn things all worked before I installed their upgrade.

I’m just really happy to report now that my Quicken is now installed and functioning as it should be. Or so I think. It’s a very different look and feel from the last one and I haven’t completely focused on learning the nuances of this program. I can get around and bang my head through the basics. Once I found the problem, I ceased learning how to work in the new version and focused solely on fixing the problem. Now that is out of the way, I can spend some time learning the new features. Scratch that – now that the problem is fixed, it’s time to install our tax software and start on the taxes. Oh, how I dread that. I dread tax time every year. Loathe it. Despise it. Avoid it with a passion. Procrastinate and stress over it. Then, always jubilant once it is over and done and e-filed.

Anyway, my imood.com indicator has been on Agitated for a day or so now, and that’s why. I changed it to Relieved a few hours ago, once the tech support guy was able to help me solve my problems. I will have to find a new mood now, one not associated with this issue! 🙂